Gary is soliciting proposals for redevelopment of the Genesis Center site. John J. Watkins, file, The Times
The City of Gary is seeking a developer to repurpose the shuttered Genesis Convention Center site by late April, and will open the door to proposals at the start of next week.
The city will accept responses to a formal request for proposals (RFP) between Jan. 5 and March 24, according to the document, which the city has published online. City staff will conduct interviews with prospective developers in April, and the city expects to award a bid by the 22 of that month.
The parameters of the RFP are flexible, with the city open to either the "adaptive reuse" of the existing structure or an all-new construction project on the site. The document outlines the possibility of either a sale or lease agreement for the property.
"(T)he city is seeking proposals that incorporate residential; retail, professional offices; restaurant, entertainment/cultural facilities, sports entertainment to energize Downtown Gary," the document reads.
The RFP notes the city's willingness to fund the demolition of the convention center itself, the demolition of the property's crumbling parking garage, or both, along with any post-demolition environmental cleanup that the site might require. The convention center site sits within a downtown "transit development district" for which state and city blight elimination funds have been set aside.
What to do with the derelict convention center — and the just over six and a half acres that it occupies in the heart of Gary's downtown — has been on the minds of Gary's leaders since 2020, when then-Mayor Jerome Prince, citing the burdensome cost of running it, shuttered the facility.
Designed by the East-Chicago born architect Wendell Campbell and built in 1981, the convention center had already faced significant deferred maintenance at the time of its closure. It has been sitting vacant for half a decade and becoming a repeated target of vandals and copper thieves. In 2022, two Gary men were charged with burglary of copper pipes from within the building.
Just months after the closure, Prince arranged to sell the building, along with the Ivanhoe Gardens housing site, to the out-of-state tech firm Akyumen Industries, which planned to turn the Genesis Center into a manufacturing facility.
The sale fell through after Akyumen failed to pay $2.5 million that it owed, and the city sued to secure the return of the properties.
The recent actions related to the Genesis Center are part of an ongoing, decades-long effort by the city to remove blighted structures. In March, Mayor Eddie Melton announced the second year of blight elimination in the Aetna neighborhood. The city is also tasked with addressing a list of over two dozen abandoned school buildings that have been the sites of violent crimes in recent years.
This May, Gary won its bid to become the site of a new state-funded Lake County convention center. The new facility will be built alongside the Hard Rock Casino off Interstate 94, and will fill many of the roles once filled by the Genesis Center.
In June, Gary issued a "request for expressions of interest" in Genesis Center redevelopment plans, a preliminary step towards an RFP.
A final decision about developer proposals will be made by the Gary Redevelopment Commission, an appointed board tasked with addressing blight and promoting economic growth in the city.
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